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Our Method

An Alternative, and Possibly More Effective Way to Learn a Language

Imagine that researchers discovered a particular medicine that proved to be up to twice as effective as current treatments. Then imagine that upon hearing about this discovery, the medical community largely ignored it. Now imagine that multiple studies repeatedly confirmed its effectiveness, yet it remained overlooked for decades.

While that may sound unlikely, that's exactly what's happened with a particular method for learning second languages. It's called the "Diglot Weave" method, and it forms the foundation of all our language courses.

Experiments have found that students using this method score approximately twice as high on the same vocabulary test as those using more common methods. Yet, bizarrely, teachers, researchers, and publishers of language learning books have almost completely ignored it.

What Is Diglot Weave?

The concept is remarkably straightforward: you gradually mix (or weave) the words, phrases, and grammar rules of another language into your native language. You essentially adopt them into your native tongue like loanwords. The name "Diglot Weave" comes from "Diglot" (meaning "two languages") and the act of weaving them together.

In practice, you treat words from your target language as newly-coined English synonyms. That way, your brain naturally processes foreign words as new "English" words rather than as foreign terms that need translation. This approach feels much, much easier than traditional methods because English speakers are constantly learning new English words as people coin new terms.

For example, when learning Spanish, you would treat "hombre" as simply another English word for "man" and use it in fully-English sentences:

The hombre met the woman.

When learning German, you would treat "Frau" as just another English word for "woman":

The man met the Frau.

The method also works for grammar. For example, many languages place adjectives after nouns (as in Spanish "coche azul" literally meaning "car blue"). During the learning process, you read and hear English sentences written using the foreign grammar (e.g. "a car blue") until the foreign pattern feels natural and familiar. Then, later, you'll readily understand the foreign language's word order when you encounter it. After enough exposure, it no longer sounds "foreign" at all; it just feels like a natural way to construct sentences.

Of course, other English speakers will find it peculiar if you mix foreign words and grammar into everyday conversation. The method works best with written text or when practicing with a learning partner using the same approach.

The Scientific Evidence

The effectiveness of this method is not just theory. Experiments have shown its superior results.

In one university study in Iran, researchers tested the Diglot Weave method on high school students learning English. Half the students learned using standard methods, while the other half used the Diglot Weave approach. When both groups were tested on how well they remembered the vocabulary, the results were striking: students taught the traditional way scored 12 out of 25, while those taught with the Diglot Weave method scored 23 out of 25 (nearly double the traditional approach).^[1]

Additionally, several pre-schools in China have adopted variations of this method to teach children English. They mix English words into fairy tales otherwise written entirely in Chinese (such as Chinese translations of Little Red Riding Hood). While the students weren't tested like they were in the Iranian experiment, published reports say the teachers observe better overall results, that the students seemed to enjoy it more, and their parents believed that their children were learning English more quickly than their peers who were still using traditional methods.^[2]

The first person to formally describe and name this method was Robbins Burling from the University of Michigan in 1968. He published a paper called, "Some Outlandish Proposals for the Teaching of Foreign Languages".

It described various ways to use this technique, followed up by a second report showing its effectiveness among his students. But despite the promising foundation he established, it mostly went unnoticed. This isn't uncommon in education; many effective methods remain underused because textbook publishers, curriculum developers, and teacher training programs are generally very slow to adopt new ideas, especially if they're very different or unusual.^[3]

Why It Works: The Neuroscience

Why Diglot Weave works so well may be explained by what happens in the brain during language learning. Brain scans have revealed some illuminating differences in how people process second languages, depending on how they learned them.

Researchers scanned the brains of volunteers while they spoke their second language to observe which regions showed activity. One group included people who had been bilingual since childhood, while the other group learned a second language as adults using traditional methods. The scans showed distinctly different patterns in their brain activity.^[4]

Volunteers who had been bilingual since childhood used almost the same brain areas when speaking both their native language and their second language. However, those who learned a second language as adults using conventional methods used mostly physically separate brain areas for their second language, distinct from those used for their native tongue.

Every volunteer showed this same pattern.

This is important because childhood bilinguals have both languages stored together in the brain, sharing the same brain resources and space. Adult learners using traditional methods, by contrast, use different parts of the brain, losing the advantages that come from sharing resources with their native language.

This brain difference may explain why traditional language learning often feels like memorizing codes rather than learning actual words. When using standard methods to remember that "bonjour" means "hello," learners aren't experiencing "bonjour" as simply another word for "hello" (like "hi" or "hey" are alternative greetings). Instead, they're putting "bonjour" in an entirely separate place, a new part of the brain that must be adjusted to deal with language.

I believe that many popular language-learning techniques and applications just turn language learning into a memory game. They train learners to memorize foreign words in the same way that we memorize PIN codes or passwords. This approach doesn't fully use the natural abilities of our speech centers, which may explain why people who excel at traditional language learning often have exceptional memory skills.

Because it's the same thing.

The Diglot Weave method, by contrast, may just put the 'foreign' words into the same places that English goes (though this needs direct observation with brain scans to confirm it). It's possible that by adopting foreign words into existing vocabulary, learners are using the same brain areas they've always used for speech, just like people who have been bilingual since childhood.

If that's what's happening, it may explain why people like me find it quicker and easier; our brains don't need to use any new space or jump through hoops, it already has everything it needs.

This Method Is Both Natural and Proven

The Diglot Weave method is not new or strange. In fact, every English speaker has used this exact approach throughout their entire life: whenever they learn a new English word.

The Oxford English Dictionary adds new entries four times per year. In March 2015 alone, it gained 207 completely new words. While many are combinations or modifications of existing words, others come from foreign languages.

English has adopted many common words from other languages in recent decades:

• "Karate" from Japanese
• "Parkour" from French
• "Robot" from Czech
• "Glitch" from Yiddish
• "Tofu" from Chinese
• "Macho" from Spanish
• And hundreds more

The older you are, the more foreign words you've naturally adopted into your vocabulary, even if you've never deliberately studied a foreign language.

How did English speakers adopt these words? By mixing them into fully English sentences, gradually transforming them into English words. This is precisely what Weavr courses do with foreign languages, but systematically and deliberately.

This goes back even further. Modern English itself was created through this exact process. Originally, English began as a branch of the Germanic language family. Over centuries, however, English adopted hundreds of thousands of words from Latin, French, Greek, and other languages. Today, only about 1 out of 4 English words comes from Germanic. In other words, approximately 3 out of 4 modern "English" words were "foreign" until English speakers adopted them.^[5]

Therefore, the Diglot Weave method isn't really new, it's very old and very ordinary; it merely uses the same process that created the English language itself.

Of course, natural language borrowing happened gradually and unconsciously through cultural contact, whereas Weavr applies this natural process in an organized, intentional way. We're taking an accidental, natural process and choosing to do it on purpose.

Discovery: A Personal Story

Many people have discovered this method on their own by experimenting. I was one of them.

I found learning foreign words extraordinarily difficult (nearly impossible), yet I had no problem learning new English words. Like most unsuccessful language learners, I initially blamed myself, assuming the teaching materials must be effective and the problem lay with me. Despite considerable effort, I made virtually no progress.

Eventually, I thought: "If I have no problem learning new English words, why don't I just pretend these foreign words are English too?" So I tried exactly that.

It worked.

To test the method properly, I chose a language I knew nothing about and found impossible to understand: Danish. I watched television programs in Danish for several hours and understood essentially nothing.

Then I wrote down a list of the most common small words used in everyday speech (words like "and," "with," "the") alongside their Danish equivalents from a dictionary. Using this reference list, I wrote numerous English sentences with the Danish words mixed in. After doing this on and off for two weeks, I watched Danish television again.

The difference was astonishing. I could actually follow what was happening (at least roughly), not because I understood every word, but because the common words I'd adopted appeared so frequently that I could piece together the general meaning of conversations and scenes. Sometimes I understood clearly, sometimes not at all, but overall I could grasp enough context to follow the storyline. This was a dramatic improvement from understanding nothing whatsoever just two weeks earlier.

Now, for some people, this would mean nothing. Some individuals would have no problem memorizing a few common words and being able to muddle through hearing a foreign TV show. But not me! I had studied Portuguese for years and still understood little or nothing of the spoken language. Yet after just two weeks with Danish using this method, I could roughly follow it. This was astonishing to me.

More importantly, the experience felt very easy. I wasn't confused, frustrated, or fighting boredom. I was enjoying it. It didn't feel like the usual language-learning chore.

Naturally, I wanted more materials using this method. However, none existed at that time. If I wanted to continue, I would have to create everything myself from scratch. I then spent several years researching, developing, and writing different Diglot Weave approaches, and eventually published short language courses using the method. Now, I publish this website, Weavr.

How Weavr Applies This Method

Weavr's strategy centers on adopting the most commonly-used words and grammar structures. It would be a waste of time to adopt the foreign-language term for 'anachronistic' before adopting the word for 'and' or their word for 'with', and so on.

Starting with the most common terms allows learners to quickly understand many words in most sentences.

Research has found that just 1,000 of the most common words cover approximately 89% of typical English writing. While exact percentages vary by language, similar patterns hold across most languages: a relatively small number of words appear over and over again. This gives us a remarkably modest learning goal: spread over a year, it amounts to merely 2.7 words per day.

The challenge isn't creating courses that include as many words as possible. Rather, it's teaching the most useful words before learners get bored and do something else!

The long-term plan involves creating enough materials to cover at least 1,000 common elements of each language. However, even a handful of these courses may provide enough to jumpstart learning, particularly for those already exposed to the language through work or family.

Your Journey Ahead

After adopting many foreign words and grammar rules through Weavr courses, the foreign language may start to feel familiar, as though you remembered a grandparent speaking to you in it when you were young. You can understand it, but wouldn't call yourself fluent (at least, not yet).

However, once you get past that stage, something remarkable begins to happen...

When you read or hear the language, the words you haven't adopted yet will feel like they're surrounded by "English" (at least from your perspective). So all content in the target language will, to your eyes, look like a Weavr language course, because it will look like "English" with foreign words mixed in between.

Once you reach this level, ordinary, everyday exposure to your target language will act exactly like a Weavr language course. Every conversation, TV show, and book, is magically transformed into a course.

And if we're right about the brain processing it in much the same places as your native language, then it may eventually feel as though you've been somewhat bilingual since childhood. The words may come to you as readily as English does now.

Of course, everyone's experience is different, but for me, this method has made language learning much easier, faster, and more enjoyable than anything else I've tried.

Maybe you will feel the same way.

References

1. "The Effect of Teaching Vocabulary through the Diglot-Weave Technique on Vocabulary Learning of Iranian High School Students" by Azadeh Nemati (Islamic Azad University) and Ensieh Maleki (Payame-Nour University). Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 98 (2014) 1340–1345. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.551 ↩
2. "Communicative Language-Teaching through Sandwich Stories" by Yuhua Ji. TESL Canada Journal / Revue TESL du Canada Vol. 17 (Winter 1999) 103-113. doi:10.1017/S0266078402001049 ↩
3. "Some Outlandish Proposals For Teaching Foreign Languages" by Robbins Burling (University of Michigan) Language Learning 18 (June 1968) 61-76. doi:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00390.x ↩
4. "Distinct cortical areas associated with native and second languages" by Kim, K., Relkin, N., Lee, KM. et al. Nature 388, 171–174 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/40623 ↩
5. Ordered profusion; studies in dictionaries and the English lexicon by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973). ISBN 3-533-02253-6 ↩